If you are an expert looking for another job or project, you come across hundreds of different job boards and an equal number of different recruitment agencies or head hunters offering their services.

If you are a company looking for experts, you are facing the exact same problem.

There doesn’t seem to be one right solution for your specific need. Left aside job aggregators like for example Indeed, SimplyHired and CareerJet, job boards only advertise vacancies of their paying customers and recruitment agencies only advertise and work for their client’s jobs.

Result:

As an expert you end up in a seemingly endless web search that risks to exhaust you because it takes away so much of your spare time. On how many different sites did you register and create a profile? To how many different recruiters did you send your CV? Standard job aggregators are not the solution either. How many times did you come across one and the same job on different sites (sometimes the company name is mentioned, sometimes it isn’t – which makes you wonder if it might be a different company, in which case you would like to apply…) I bet you probably just gave up in the end…

As a company you end up with too many different providers and job boards because none of them have access to the entire talent pool. Before you even have hired someone, you have already spent large amounts of money on job advertisements and prepaid recruiter fees.

The recruitment landscape is so fragmented that instead of helping companies and experts to find each other, it prevents them from finding each other.

Traditional business models are predominantly built around solving the needs of the companies because that’s where the cash comes from. Recruiters and head hunters have made a multibillion dollar industry from the trade in CV’s. “The hunt for talent” literally became a very nasty trophy hunting game with a reward in the form of a finders fee of up to 30% of the gross annual salary for the agency that first introduced the right candidate. There are stories about certain cowboys out there who just send unsolicited CV’s to companies and the sole fact that the company opens the email, ties them to a fee. Candidates often don’t even realize what happens with their CV and leave their CV in good trust, thinking the more agencies have their CV, the better.

The goal is the same as the goal of the companies: they are trying to uncover the entire market.

The side effect is that both experts and companies are being “stalked” by different recruiters/head hunters offering you jobs you no longer want to do or candidates you don’t need or you know already via one of your other providers. (That being said, I don’t even want to know how much time companies are spending on average managing the relationships with all these different parties.)

So what needs to change?

Reverse it.

Stop hunting for talent and focus on attracting talent.

How?

Make it easier for talent to find you. Be attractive and transparent, focus and don’t contribute to fragmentation. You’ll put in far less effort and money and you can be sure to attract the right people.